Alien: Covenant - why its preview footage got us all excited

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>In one sequence, we see the Covenant make its descent through thick cloud to the planet below, and just as it did in Alien, the ship’s cockpit feels cramped and utilitarian. From a production design angle, the argument probably goes that the craft in Prometheus was a luxurious vessel for Weyland-Yutani’s executives - complete with Swarovski chandeliers - while the Nostromo and the Covenant are more pared-back and workmanlike. Yet cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s camerawork also takes a more gritty turn in this movie; locked-off shots of landscapes are matched by grainy close-ups with a shaky, handheld feel. Jerry Goldsmith’s theme music from the original Alien also makes a surprise comeback, and those high, fractious strings still cause a shiver after all these years.

>There are more shivers in store when the shuttle despatched from the Covenant lands on the planet surface. As a search party begins wandering around, it isn’t long before one or two members get struck down by something nasty. As you might remember from the trailer, one very ill explorer is dragged back to the shuttle’s sickbay, and actresses Amy Seimetz and Carmen Ejogo look on agog as a tiny monster emerges from a stricken victim’s back. We got to see a much longer version of this sequence, where the monster - dubbed a neomorph by Alien: Covenant’s filmmakers - lands on the floor with a squelch and attacks Carmen Ejogo’s character.

>Unlike the chestburster from Alien, these little critters don’t scurry off down the nearest corridor - when cornered, the neomorph will immediately attack whoever’s closest, and despite their diminutive size, they’re surprisingly strong. They’re also extremely difficult to hit, as Amy Seimetz tries to take the newborn out with her trusty space rifle - a gambit that leaves the rest of the landing party staring from the sidelines as their shuttle vanishes in an orange ball of flame.

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>The surviving explorers don’t have much time to ponder how they’re going to get back off the planet; a second stricken victim starts to convulse and, in a shower of gore, yet another neomorph springs forth.

>It’s worth pausing here to talk a bit about blood and guts. Prometheus had its moments of body horror, but you may remember that its makers hedged their bets a little bit during its making. Unsure whether they were going to go for a PG-13 or R rating, Scott shot two versions of Elizabeth Shaw’s now infamous “Caesarean by UFO grabber” scene - one with generous lashings of claret and ooze and one without. Whether the movie would’ve got past the MPAA with a bit less blood or not is a moot point by now, but the fact remains that Prometheus wasn’t necessarily designed from the ground up to be a violent, nasty space horror.

>Alien: Covenant evidently has. The monster births are joined by splashes of crimson; Carmen Ejogo’s ill-advised knife-fight with a neomorph is toothsome and nasty. Scott’s clearly going for a much harder edge with Covenant; while we’ll have to wait and see whether this results in a properly scary film, it undoubtedly looks intense.

>Some of our beefs with Prometheus do make a return, though. Most glaringly, Weyland-Yutani employees still haven’t learned that, when visiting alien planets, it’s advisable to wear some kind of protection from deadly microbes. Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) couldn’t wait to get his damn helmet off in Prometheus; in Alien: Covenant, the landing party seem to turn up on an unknown world with little more than a series of hats and hoodies for protection.

the leaks were right lel

Member alien

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>From what we’ve seen so far, we’re still not sure whether the characterisation is better in Covenant than Prometheus, either. Katherine Waterston’s character only gets a line or two, if memory serves, and some crewmembers seem difficult to tell apart in all the confusion. The full movie will, we’re sure, spend time fleshing everyone out and establishing their motivations. The allegiance of Fassbender’s new android Walter, for example, is kept under wraps, and unless we blinked and missed him, James Franco’s character was nowhere to be found. Likewise the big, bad xenomorph itself - a character we know from the trailers is waiting in the wings somewhere, ready to pounce.

>As a sample of Alien: Covenant’s style and tone, however, Fox’s preview did its job. Ridley Scott’s latest puts the emphasis back on horror, and we’re cautiously optimistic that the old Starbeast will emerge once again as one of cinema’s scariest monsters.

>>78901010
Were the leaks of a good movie with potential? I never read them.

All I know is that Fassbender's robot experiments once again

>Danny McBride and James Franco
NOT EVEN PICKING UP

>Walter finds David in a scene parallel to David finding the Engineer
>David writes Walter on a piece of paper and then folds it over to reveal his real name; Ealter

I liked the gray nature of new planet from so far i've seen in the trailer.

t.not marketeer

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>>78900974
>we’ve still no clue how David was repaired
I thought he was an entirely different robot but just same skin

>>78901044
James Franco is great

Remember 127 Hours?

>>78901068
Walter is different, but David is literally in the film.

Two characters, both played by The Fass.

>>78901076
>David pretending to be someone else who looks just like him
Woah I never saw this coming

>>78901087
>Two characters, both played by The Fass.
Is Ridley going to try to attempt a Face Off reference? I hope not

>"It's like looking into a mirror only... not"

After seeing his The Martian which I didn't like its comedy, I hope there is no quips in this

>>78901084
no

>>78901044
>Danny McBride
Literally who?

Looking up that he is a comedy actor, this has me worried.

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the master disapproves

>>78901114
If it's any consolation; The Martian's quips, along with the entire script, was almost line-for-line from the book.

Surprised he left out the part where Watney sends text-based tits to NASA.

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>>78901143
Cameron BTFO by 1 article
http://www.gq.com/story/james-cameron-alien-covenant

Anyone who defends his 5 Blue Alien movies has to be a troll

>>78901143
he said we didn't need another Alien movie? We don't need 4 sequels to pocahontas rip off blue ayy aliums story neither.

I got a message on my phone saying that a new trailer for Alien: Covenant has been released... yet there isn't one.

Fuck you whoever sent me that

>>78901186
Yes we do need another Alien movie. NOT in the style of Alien 1. NOT in the style of Aliens, but somewhere different and unique.

I can't wait for Blomkamp to make his Alien 3

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>>78901174
>But is there any validity to doing another one now? I don't know. Maybe. Let's see, jury's out. Let's see what Ridley comes up with.
>director with close personal ties to the series echos the comments of basically everyone else on the internet
>WOAH WOAH YOU SALTY BRO WHY ARE YOU SO SALTY HAHAHAHA MAN WOOOOW UHHH ALRIGHT THEN, STAY MAD ;)

>>78901211
it has a completelly new style according to the article in OP post. This is new chtonic planet, new forms of terror, new images of death of engineers, new angle on colonists life, new spin on the alien genesis story, new conflict of android intrests...

>>78901174
He's making a saga with an expended space opera universe it is a genre suitable to world building and new adventures, it was originally conceived as such, Scott is just rehashing a former success because of nostalgia pandering without any fresh ideas or even sincere desire to please fans its just lazy and soulless like all he's done in thirty years

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>>78901286
>He's making a saga with an expended space opera universe
>Avatar: Space Opera

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>>78901347
imagine envoromentalist propaganda he will use to make space ships for blue aliens look like trees of tampliers from Hyperion

>>78901186
kek

>>78901398
I don't wanna watch blue aliens running around

>>78901347
To be fair though, what >>78901286 said is basically what Cameron did with Aliens, he introduced the queen and a shit ton of aliens, expanding the viewers knowledge of the creatures.

>>78901522
which was ultimately a bad thing
aliens was basically an r-rated gremlins movie

>>78901665
I know, it was wonderful

>>78900974
In other words, it's going to kick-ass like everybody expected.

>>78901665

Aliens is just a victim of its own success. The same with Terminator 2.

Those sequels were so good (especially in their time) that their lasting legacy far exceeded that of the originals and they became 'the norm' of the franchises.

It's hard to appreciate them as unique now because so many imitations and tropes have come from them.

>>78901665
much better than alien though

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>>78900974
>>78900991
>>78901009
TL;DR : it's shit

>>78900974
>In terms of raw plot, it’s all time-worn stuff.

this article was made to convince you that even though this is a straight up remake-prequel-sequel shitfest, ignore that and just accept it and watch this alien remake.

>Alien: Covenant appears to be a far more rough-edged and gritty film than Prometheus.

its darker and more serious than the other film, so that makes it better. thank you star wars 3 excuse.

DROPPED
R R
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P P
P P
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D D

>>78901043
The spaceship Covenant is transporting frozen embryos to a human colony on a faraway planet when they receive a distress signal from Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace), from the Prometheus expedition, which disappeared 10 years prior. The crew is brought out of hypersleep to answer to the signal, which leads to the death of the Covenant's captain, Branson (James Franco). His wife, Daniels (Katherine Waterson), is deeply affected by the accident, while Branson's first officer Archer (Billy Crudup) is made captain. The Covenant is piloted by Daniels's friend Tennessee (Danny McBride) and the crew is aided by an android, Walter (Michael Fassbender).

The Covenant follows Shaw's signal to Paradise, an uncharted forest planet and homeworld of the Engineers, the ancient extraterrestrials that seeded life on Earth and then sought to the destroy it. The Engineers' secret weapon, the black ooze, has spread through Paradise, turning it into a wasteland. The Covenant's crew ventures into Paradise on a exploratory shuttle, and some of its members are exposed to spores released by plants infected by the ooze. It is determined they've contracted an alien pathogen and Archer has them quarantined aboard the shuttle.

Monstrous creatures known as "Neomorphs" burst from the infected crewmen's bodies and begin slaughtering the crew. While attempting to destroy the creatures, one of the crewmen punctures the fuel tank and blows up the shuttle, forcing the survivors to flee into the forest, where they are rescued from the Neomorphs by David (Michael Fassbender), the sole survivor of the Prometheus crew.

David reveals that Shaw sacrificed herself to crash a spaceship against Paradise's surface, exposing the Engineers to the black ooze to prevent them from destroying Earth, leaving him stranded on Paradise.

>>78901009
>matched by grainy close-ups with a shaky, handheld feel.

fuck shakey cam in muh alien movie.

>Most glaringly, Weyland-Yutani employees still haven’t learned that,

more dumb scooby doo "lets split up, gang" characters

fuck.

prometheus>alien>>>>>>>aliens>>>>shit>>>piss>>>avatar

Great. Yet another shill thread. Can't you kids see through these threads?

>>78902153
David leads the survivors back to the Engineers' derelict citadel, where he's been living ever since. Walter mistrusts David, who is not behaving in accordance with their programming, and finds out that David in fact murdered Shaw. David's mind has been warped by the numerous modifications that his creator, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce), made to his programming during the Prometheus's expedition, and is obsessed with creating the "perfect organism". He exposed numerous lifeforms on Paradise, including Shaw, to the black ooze and, after numerous failed attempts, has created an alien egg, which produces a facehugger that latches itself to Archer.

Daniels and Tennessee realize David is controlling the Neomorphs and blow up his laboratory, killing the Neomorphs. They escape back to the Covenant with Walter and Archer in order to leave Paradise, but a Xenomorph then bursts out of Archer and begins slaughtering the remaining crew. Daniels and Tennessee lure the Xenomorph into the Covenant's airlock and eject it into Space just as the Covenant takes off.

After escaping, Daniels and Tennessee place themselves back in hypersleep to continue their voyage to the colony, unaware that David has killed Walter and stolen his identity to leave Paradise. David secretly plants two alien egg embryos among the human frozen embryos that the Covenant is transporting to proceed to the next phase of his experiment.

>>78901174
>>78901174
Coming from the man who wants to make 4 more Avatar movies. And terminator....

>>78901211
>I can't wait for Blomkamp to make his Alien 3

>"The alien is the victim and much as the humans! It's the oppression of Weyland-Yutani that is the actual evil! These aliens from the slums have to fight back against the system but they also need cybernetic enhancements and railguns!"

>>78902315
Looks like kino

>>78900974
theme
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vQaVIoEjOM

>>78901211
>I can't wait for Blomkamp to make his Alien 3

Fuck no.

Alien 3 is fine as it is. It's the sad, final act in the Ripley story act. There doesn't need to be any more.

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>>78901044
>not wanting to see Kenny fucking Powers take on space fucking faggots

>>78900974
From what i've seen it looks pretty shit desu...
even worse than Prometheus, and I was excited for Prometheus.

>>78902498
i really hope they shot extra footage of him riffing and doing all his lines as kenny for the special features

Guaranteed this movie ends with an alien tumbling out of an airlock

>>78902481
i agree, i mean Aliens has a happy ending, wtf

>>78902315
Alien X? Complete with neo-goth attire

>>78902050
no way these are all real, I would shit

>>78902508
>even worse than Prometheus

Prometheus was good, rewatched it many times.

>>78900991
>a shaky, handheld feel.

pls no

>>78902242
>, unaware that David has killed Walter and stolen his identity

wow didnt see that coming

>>78901211

Bloomkamp is garbage, my man

>>78902242

This movie sounds like dogshit

>>78901009
>dude bloodier lmao
>dude knife fight a chestburster lmao

What the FUCK is wrong with these people? Do they realize that nobody gives a shit if they introduce "le epic NEW alien" as if it were some kind of scifi serial, and that what people want from the series is a return to slow paced horror? Any other movie could be made in which a character knife fights the fucking monster, but to remove all sense of vulnerability here is really indicative that whoever's in charge of this is simply puppeting Scott's corpse around to try and make nerd bucks.

They're freely admitting to repeating the worst mistakes of Prometheus, and even the most egregious Prometheus apologists weren't clamoring for a sequel.

>>78901084
In every James Franco movie you can just sense this smug self-satisfaction lurking just underneath the surface. Not that it's particularly malicious or anything, but you can tell he's aware of the fact that he's an actor, and it's not good for dramatic roles.

>>78904501
Seriously, why bother making a prometheus sequel if you're not going to bring back Noomi. Just another shit movie in an already shit franchise.

>>78900974

>denofgeek
>"while we're still keeping our expectations in check"
>footage got us all excited
>admits it's rehashed alien shit
>still excited

RLM was right. All these geek news sites are just hype machines in exchange for free screenings and preferential treatment from studios.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECeJfK2_iPs
What went wrong for Ridley that he hired these two retards?

>>78901143
But he hasn't made anything that came close to the cultural legacies of Alien or Blade Runner.

>>78902153
>leaving him stranded on paradise
Wow, it's like poetry

>>78902242
>but a Xenomorph bursts out of Archer and begins slaughtering the crew

t. I don't know how Xenomorphs work

Has there ever been a good prequel that existed to explain the origins of something? Nobody but redditing autists want the mystique pared back so that they can get their worldbuilding fix.

>>78902242
So Prometheus 3 confirmed?

>>78900974
Very Cool :^)

>David is the main bad guy after his character was already the only redeemable thing in Prometheus

Nice, this might save this trainwreck.

>>78900991
me on the left

>>78904560

Fass was the only good thing about it. Everythign about him felt it was written by someone else, someone who actually cared about a little bit more than the rest of the movie.

Also fuck Noomie and her religion schtick. Im all for the new Ripley lookalike in this one.

>>78900991
>Doughy Ellen Page lookalike as an action headliner

When will this meme end?

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>>78902242

This really is heading the direction where the Space Jockey in Alien is David and the eggs came from the embryos on the Covenant.

I don't know how I feel about this. It completely shits all over what is 'alien' about Alien. Especially about what they found on LV-426 in the first film.

>>78905189
Space Jockey not being a giant, asshole elephant man was the most disappointing aspect of Prometheus.

>>78905179

There going for the Aliens Ripley look. And its not an action movie.

>>78905383
>not an action movie

DROPPED

>>78905179

Well first off you can't just plop the word meme down in front of whatever you don't like because that's nonsense, BUT ANYWAY, what other movies are you talking about that have done this? Like, Edge of Tomorrow or some shit?

>>78905449
Edge of Tomorrow doesn't even count. Tom Cruise is the main character, not Blunt.

>>78905189
it's supposed to have been some kind of unknown unknowable carcass, a remnant perhaps millennia old from some bygone alien civilization, an abandoned car wreck on the side of an interstellar road
prometheus already ruined that mystery

>>78905383
It's not being sold as one, but it will be, same as Prometheus.

>>78905449
Edge of Tomorrow was the ONE movie made in the last few years to avoid this, actually. Emily Blunt was really in shape for her role as a military commander. Similarly, Sigourney Weaver was pretty stringy back in Alien.

Now actresses look as if they've just got off of the couch to play at acting for a day. There's no preparing for the role physically or mentally and it's just a sign of a lazy actor and bad movie. See Daenerys Targaryen in that new Terminator as the the most egregious example.

>>78905251
that wouldve been about AS bad as what prometheus did

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>>78905511
>it's supposed to have been some kind of unknown unknowable carcass, a remnant perhaps millennia old from some bygone alien civilization, an abandoned car wreck on the side of an interstellar road
>prometheus already ruined that mystery


I'll never forgive Ridley for that.

He ruined one of the best bits of the Alien series. What really makes it worse is that it's a part that literally did not need any further expansion. Quite the opposite in fact.

>>78905599
Something being bad because it's ridiculous is still superior to something being bad because it's poorly done.

>>78905575

Thats absolute bullshit. The great thing about ripley is thats shes NOT at all the type who plays an action character. And thats the great thing, shes super vulnerable in Alien which makes it even hotter.

Same with Aliens.

>>78905804
That's what I'm saying. She's not an action type, but on first glance it's really believable that she works for some shipping company out in the middle of nowhere for stretches at a time.

The actress posted in this thread doesn't look like that. It looks like she's lazily cosplaying. There's nothing there to create a character, she's "bland mid-2010s woman in the future".

>>78905931
Hollywood is a business and if you don't explicitly advertise your headliner then you won't make as much money.

wow what an absolute clusterfuck
garbage

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>>78901143
>implying aliens was anywhere close to as masterful as Alien

>>78905931
what is she doing?

>>78901009
>Most glaringly, Weyland-Yutani employees still haven’t learned that, when visiting alien planets, it’s advisable to wear some kind of protection from deadly microbes. Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) couldn’t wait to get his damn helmet off in Prometheus; in Alien: Covenant, the landing party seem to turn up on an unknown world with little more than a series of hats and hoodies for protection.


It's probably a miracle Dallas was smart enough to wear a spacesuit in Alien.

>>78904928
Ridley Scott said there's a Prometheus 3 and a Prometheus 4 to go before we reach Alien.

>>78904779
>t. I don't know how Xenomorphs work
eh?

>>78901084
but he cameos as a stiff in this

>>78906332
why the fuck do they need helmets on planets with breathable atmospheres? spacesuit helmets are clunky and inconvenient, and when you're rugged explorers looking across the stars for a place to colonize you're not some pussy afraid of a space disease. What are you gonna do, start a civilization trapped in fucking helmets on the planet you're colonizing? we have continents with incredibly dangerous pathogens, but you don't see anyone putting on a helmet when they go to fucking Africa, do you?

Shit, the ONLY reason they wear helmets in Alien is because the film goes out of its way to tell you that the atmosphere on LV-426 is unbreathable. In Aliens, when the planet is being terraformed, nobody cares about helmets. Nobody wears helmets on Fury 161.

Shit, in Prometheus, before they take their helmets off, the ship's doctor says that the air is cleaner than Earth's! Do you really think that when you're climbing around on some space rock, you're going to care more about the incredibly slim possibility of some horrible bioengineered pathogen unprecedented by any of humanity's discoveries among the stars than you would about being able to explore the planet unencumbered by some shitty-ass helmet that makes you waste oxygen canisters, forces you to use radio to talk with your fellow explorers, fogs up in your face and just generally sucks?

>>78907221
has to be b8

>>78907248
If you, the audience, did not know there was a horrible parasitic death monster on these planets, would you honestly even have cared that they didn't want to put on helmets to explore a planet with a breathable atmosphere?

>>78907599
Yes, fiction has to be plausible. If it's an alien planet then breathable atmosphere or not there needs to be tests done to make sure there aren't dangerous microbes. Common sense.

>>78907221
>In Aliens, when the planet is being terraformed, nobody cares about helmets.
True. The whole helmet thing is context dependent. In Prometheus it was fucking retarded because the people were supposed to be SCIENTISTS.
In Covenant we have soldiers and colonists on a world that looks a lot like our own. That makes it way more excusable.

>>78907221
>In Aliens, when the planet is being terraformed, nobody cares about helmets. Nobody wears helmets on Fury 161.
In Aliens the planet had been inhabited for at least two decades, so obviously they'd done their work. In Fury 161 there's no telling how long people had lived there.
So you fail there.

>>78904398
this movie isn't even out yet you dumb prick

>>78905701
He did the same shit with Blade Runner. Interview 'So is Deckard a replicant?' Ridley 'You betcha!'

Ridley seems to love shitting on his prior work. The new Blade Runner will be another shitfest where Deckard discovers he is a replicant.

>>78907221
>New world
>New lifeforms
>Not taking precautions
I understand that humans have explored our own planet without wearing fancy protective gear except when underwater or outside our atmosphere. But those were early explorers without much in the way of technology and yes MANY of those early pioneers DIED for their courage by contracting tropical diseases or being bitten by venomous creatures. These days there are far fewer surprises out there if you are smart.

>>78901043
It's an apology for Prometheus

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>>78901174
>It's like, okay, we've got it, we've got the whole Freudian biomechanoid meme.
>meme
Is James Cameron /ourguy/, sick of the memes?

>>78904398
It actually sounds good. Stop being an eternal contrarian, it doesn't make you sound cool.

>>78905179
desu that's what I like about the Aliens franchise. The protagonists look like random hicks, not action heroes.

>>78900974
>michael fassbender makes prometheus
>sees how it goes
>decides to make another in exact same role

He was decent in it but what is with that guy and taking shitbox roles?